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Human rights

How businesses consider human rights has gained greater prominence in recent years. It features regularly in current political discourse about public trust in business behaviour and in investors’ demand for increased transparency of Environmental Social and Governance performance. The two are related – lack of disclosure is a gap in the trust narrative.

We convened a cross-company working group to draft the policy statement, and identify and assess human rights risks and potential impacts on our employees, customers, suppliers and communities. This group identified our salient human rights issues as access to clean water, data protection and privacy, health and safety, and modern slavery.

As part of our approach to protecting human rights and proventing modern slavery we carried out a risk-based review of our supply chain to identify the risk from all forms of modern slavery, identifying four categories of spend most susceptible to abuses – chemicals, workwear & PPE, IT hardware & equipment, and mains materials – which encompass 594 suppliers across 12 countries (85% in the EU, plus the US and Australia) and account for 13.4% of our annual procurement spend. Our progress over the last 12 months can be found in our Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement (PDF 361 KB opens in new window) for 2018,

To date, we have not identified any human rights abuses within our own operations nor our supply chain and so no remediation actions have been required. However, as we cannot guarantee that they aren’t present in some form, we’ve mapped our human rights risks against our corporate risk register and manage them within this framework. In addition, our supply chain modern slavery risk management plan is detailed in the Statement.

Salient issues and vulnerable groups mapping

Access to clean water

Access to clean water

Our Business Principle commitment to provide a safe, clean and reliable water supply now and in the future.

Contract labour

Local communities

Children

Migrant labour

Indigenous people

We are not aware of any of our employees, contract labour nor local communities identifying as Indigenous.

Data protection & privacy

Data protection & privacy

Employees

Data Protection Policy

Contract labour

Agency Worker Policy

Fixed-Term Worker Policy

Local communities

Customer Data Protection Policy

Privacy Policy

Our Business Principle commitment to make sure our customers and their details remain safe

Children / Migrant labour

Not applicable

Indigenous people

We are not aware of any of our employees, contract labour nor local communities identifying as Indigenous

Health & safety

Health & safety

Employees

Health & Safety Policy

Contract labour

Contractors Health & Safety Charter

Local communities

Customer Data Protection Policy

Privacy Policy

Our Business Principle commitment to make sure our customers and their details remain safe

Children / Migrant labour

Not applicable

Indigenous people

We are not aware of any of our employees, contract labour nor local communities identifying as Indigenous

Modern slavery

Modern slavery

Employees

Our stringent employment checks and various internal policies guaranteeing and protecting employee rights help ensure that human trafficking does not occur within our own operations

Contract labour

99.5% of our supply chain spend is with EU based companies who are now required to comply with the EU non-Financial Reporting Directive, guaranteeing worker rights and protection*

Local communities

Other statements in this column apply here

Children / Migrant labour

As a highly regulated UK utility operating in North West England only, our use of stringent employment checks means that it is highly unlikely that child nor migrant trafficking has occurred within our own operations, as well as a result of them

Indigenous people

We are not aware of any of our employees, contract labour nor local communities identifying as Indigenous

* The 0.5% of our supply chain spend outside the UK/EU is in the US, Australia and Norway. These are countries that also have domestic human rights related laws and legislation in place.